MSc in Computer Science and Engineering - Secure, Trustworthy, and Reliable Systems in Ann Arbor United States | University of Michigan Ann Arbor

The ongoing miniaturization of silicon manufacturing processes has introduced major reliability issues that are now a primary design obstacle. Design robustness faces threats from both complexity hurdles, where massive designs resist full verification, and physical issues like semiconductor degradation and transient faults that disrupt proper system function, along with hardware-level security vulnerabilities. CSE researchers in this field are tackling these critical problems through coordinated research approaches, spanning from immediate reliability enhancement methods to boost current chip quality, to future-oriented solutions for identifying, recovering from, and fixing system failures. Furthermore, ensuring the absolute functional accuracy of digital chips, especially sophisticated processors, is vital for creating secure, trustworthy systems. Yet this objective remains unmet today, as shown by extensive bug reports for commercial processors detailing design flaws missed during verification. To overcome verification difficulties, researchers are developing self-monitoring systems that can detect and amend their own errors. They're pioneering update methods to fix these overlooked bugs even after deployment, effectively giving hardware the adaptability of software. Additionally, they're studying economical runtime validation approaches, specifically methods with mathematically guaranteed error prevention capabilities.